It takes a village to raise this child
If you’re lucky enough to have one individual at your institution who is responsible for staff development, and if this person is lucky enough to be able to devote 100% of his/her time to developing and implementing a Learning 2.0 programme, then you probably don’t need a “village” to get this thing of the ground and running! We had no such individual, so L2@Mac was put together and run under the auspices of the Emerging Technologies Group (which I chair). While we borrowed from PLCMC’s excellent programme, we added a lot of our own content too, so it was nice to be able to spread that work around the committee members. Also, ETG members served as “Team Leaders” for L2@Mac participants (more on that later) which is something we would not have been able to do if we didn’t have a committee to start with! (A word of advice on the size of the group: there are 5 of us in ETG and we’ve found that to be the perfect number — enough to spread the work around, but not too many that booking meetings and getting things done becomes a problem.)

Leave yourself plenty of time to plan
We started talking about doing L2@Mac in August 2006. We launched in February 2007. While I can’t say that we devoted tons of time to planning in the early months (we really got down to it in November 2006), I will say that it took A LOT of time and energy to get where we needed to get to by launch date. Also, we launched the programme with a guest speaker (only the best: Michael Stephens!) and planning that event alone took a considerable amount of time.

Launch. Wait. Begin.
Our official launch was on February 1st but the programme didn’t begin until February 12th. At first we worried that staff enthusiasm might wane if we didn’t begin the programme right after the launch (Michael did a tremendous job of rallying the troops and we wanted to take advantage of that enthusiasm!), but in retrospect, I think those extra days were a good idea — it gave our staff time to think about what they were getting into (!) and I think we had more sign-ups because of it.

There is no perfect time to run the programme
If you’re at an academic institution, you probably understand where I’m coming from. We thought long & hard about when to do it: we ruled out the fall because, well, it’s THE FALL — the beginning of a new school year and our busiest term! While the summer might have seemed an obvious choice, we ruled it out on account of too many people being away during the summer and therefore missing out on a lot of what we had planned. So we settled on the winter term. Some of our participants (especially public service staff) told us that they were still too busy to do justice to the programme, but they also acknowledged that there is no perfect time, so they plugged along (bless them!). If I were to do it over, I might choose to do it between April and June (again, not perfect, but maybe a bit better than right during term).

Don’t reinvent the wheel
Obviously we modeled our programme on the one Helene built at PLCMC. We changed a few things and added some modules, but it was so great to be able to draw from an already successful programme and learn from their experience. Helene had the foresight and generosity to license her content under Creative Commons, so there is a huge number of institutions that have done/are doing their own versions of the programme. So there literally is no reason at all to reinvent the wheel!

Not everyone is self-directed and not everyone learns the same way
One of the reasons I was drawn to Helene’s idea was that it was a completely self-directed programme — learners interacted with the content on their own, they worked on the activities in a self-directed way, and they took responsibility for their own learning. All good things. However, I knew early on that an entirely online programme would not work for our staff. I also knew that since our staff are all located in close proximity, we could definitely use that to our advantage. So we did two things:

1. we organized all participants into “learning groups” & assigned each group a team leader (a member of ETG);
2. we held drop-in sessions in our teaching lab to give staff the opportunity to leave their desks for an hour, come to the lab to work on the activities for the week, ask questions, and get help from their peers.

We started the drop-in sessions during a 2 week break we had right in the middle of the programme, and they were so well received that we decided to hold at least a couple of drop-ins a week until the end of the programme.

Give participants time to catch up
That 2-week break in the middle of the programme was essential. Initially we scheduled one week (again, not wanting enthusiasm to wane), but we changed it to 2 weeks when we realized that some participants were stressing out over not getting the activities done. Everyone really appreciated the 2 weeks off and most participants caught up as a result of the break. We also had 2 weeks of “play time” scheduled at the end of the programme, which ended up being “catch-up time” for many, without which we would have had far fewer participants complete the programme.

Find a content balance
I’m not sure how to go about doing this but the lesson here is that it’s important to NOT try to do too much with this programme because that will just stress out your participants (especially the less tech-inclined). But, at the same time, I think it’s important to build enough into the programme to keep people interested and engaged, especially those who are ahead of the pack in terms of using emerging technologies. How to reach this balance? I think 2 things helped us get there:

1. we kept our minimum requirements low and non-threatening;
2. we offered “enrichment” exercises and further reading options for those who were coasting through.

I think there was probably more we could have done to keep things interesting for those who were already comfortable with the technologies — such as giving them a “guest blogging” role on the L2@Mac blog to share their knowledge and enthusiasm, for example.

Enticements are…enticing!
While I’d like to think that so many of our staff members would have signed up EVEN IF we didn’t promise them an MP3 player at the end of the programme (and a chance to win a laptop), the truth is that we probably would have had fewer sign-ups and completions! So, yes, enticements are a good thing.

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Whew, sorry for the length! I might add to this post if I come up with anything else, but this pretty much it for now. If you’ve read this far (!), chances are that you’re planning a Learning 2.0 programme yourself, so feel free to get in touch if you have any questions about what I’ve said here or about our programme in general!

Lately, I’ve had a few of people ask if I had any “lessons learned” to share, as one of the co-organizers of the programme. As I responded to those emails (hastily copying & pasting links to my co-organizers’ excellent blog posts on the topic), I began to realize that three distinct “lessons” have emerged for me, from my involvement with Five Weeks:

1. Have a Champion (or two). The whole course was filled with champions, of course, from the presenters, to the participants, to everyone who cheered us along from the sidelines (there were so many cheerers – thank you!), but for me the real champion was Meredith. She just got it so right, from coming up with the idea, to putting it out there on her blog while it was still in its infancy, to being brave enough to take the leap, pull the rest of us together, and make it happen. I’m sure my co-organizers will agree with me when I say it just could not have happened without her, and it couldn’t have gone so well without her either! Our other champion? Without a doubt, Tom Peters. He made the synchronous parts of the course totally painless for us (and our participants!) which required all sorts of behind-the-scenes diligence on his part. Thank you for being our champion, Tom!

2. Much Care & Feeding is Required. Like Karen, the course came at a bad time for me (all sorts of changes at work, coordinating a Learning 2.0 programme @ my library, existing speaking/publishing/teaching commitments, committee work, &c., &c., arrrgh!!) so I totally fell down on the care & feeding part.I had grand plans to do more blogging, commenting, and general engaging with our participants and presenters, but as it turned out, I was barely able to support my little group of 5, and for that I am abundantly regretful. Lesson learned? A course like Five weeks takes a lot of dedication, time and energy, so take it on when you can dedicate the time & energy to the project that it deserves.

3. Best Idea Ever: The Final Project. To recap: for their final projects, course participants had to write a proposal to implement one of the social software technologies covered during the course. The proposals our participants came up with were nothing short of brilliant, and as a co-organizer, I took so much pride in seeing them work through the topics and technologies and really think about what would work for their institutions. As someone who has taught online courses on emerging tech since 2003, trust me when I tell you that there is no better way to make your participants engage deeply with the topics (rather than skimming them all and filing them away under “might need this later”) than to ask them to pick a technology and work through the implementation details in a proposal. This is such a great idea that I’m not going to teach another social software course without doing the same (or similar) final project!

Would I do it again? Without a doubt. Especially if I get to work with the likes of Meredith, Michelle, Dorothea, Karen, and Ellyssa again! The good news is that we get to pick this thing apart some more over the next few months, as Dorothea’s excellent Five Weeks poster-session proposal for ASIS&T’s Annual Meeting was accepted!

• info about the course is here
• the preliminary program of stellar presenters is here
• the participant application is here
• the deadline for participant applications is December 1, 2006

Questions? Get in touch with us at sociallibrary AT gmail DOT com!

If you have any practical examples of social tools at work in your library, consider putting in a proposal to share your experience and ideas with others who might be able to benefit from them. More details on what we’re looking for are here. It’s going to be fabulous, you know you want to be involved! Email your ideas to us at sociallibrary AT gmail DOT com.

You might remember Meredith Farkas’ post from some time ago on the topic of access to free, online, educational opportunities. Well, toward the end of that post, Meredith began forming an idea for a free online course, taught by people with expertise, using freely-available software and web-based tools. Well, like a lot of Meredith’s ideas, I loved it instantly, and I fired off an email that said: Meredith, count me in (and she did!). And, also like a lot of Meredith’s ideas, this one was not left wilting on the Pile of Good Blog Ideas Soon Forgotten, she actually pulled together a group of librarians and we’ve been working out the details on a course that will start next February. I am excited and delighted to be working with a bunch of brilliant librarians (Meredith Farkas, Dorothea Salo, Michelle Boule, Ellyssa Kroski, and Karen Coombs) to bring you “Five Weeks to a Social Library”!

While the Planning Committee will most certainly have a hand in content-creation, we wanted to open up participation to anyone else with expertise who would like to be a part of this exciting educational opportunity (we’re hoping to attract both familiar and new voices). Our CFP, below, should fill in all the details on the sort of content we’re looking for (topics, formats), but if you have any questions at all, feel free to contact us at sociallibrary@gmail.com.

Update: Wow, thanks for all your emails expressing interest in signing up for the course! Watch for the Participant Application, coming in October!

CFP: Five Weeks to a Social Library
Location: Online
Dates: February 12 – March 17, 2007
CFP Deadline: September 22, 2006

We are pleased to present Five Weeks to a Social Library , the first free, grassroots, completely online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries. The course was developed to provide a free, comprehensive, and social online learning opportunity for librarians who do not otherwise have access to conferences or continuing education and who would benefit greatly from learning about social software. The course will take place in Drupal and on a MediaWiki installation, and will also involve a variety of other popular social software tools. The course will make use of synchronous components, with one or two weekly Webcasts and many IM chat sessions being made available to students each week. The course will culminate in each student developing a proposal for implementing a specific social software tool in their library.

The course will take place between February 12 and March 17 and will be limited to forty participants. However, course content will be freely viewable to interested parties and all live Webcasts will be archived for later viewing.

We are currently welcoming proposals for live presentations and course content on the following topics:

• Blogs
• RSS
• Wikis
• Social Networking Software and SecondLife
• Flickr
• Social Bookmarking Software
• Selling Social Software @ Your Library (no live Webcasts on this topic)

We want the presentations to be as practical and useful to as wide a library-related audience as possible. Preference will be given to presentations that 1) are very “nuts-and-bolts” or 2) describe a successful use of the technology that could be replicated in different types of libraries.

We are looking for presentations in the following formats:

• Webcast – a one-hour live online Webcast that will be archived.
• Screencast/Vodcast – no more than 30 minutes (please note: most commercial screencasting software offer a 30-day free trial).
• Podcast – we welcome proposals for podcast presentations, podcast interviews with innovators in the field or podcast discussions between innovators in the field.
• Text presentations – we will accept a very limited number of text presentations, but we greatly prefer presentations that incorporate audio and video.

In addition to developing a presentation, presenters must also make themselves available via AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) for questions from students for one-hour during the week their presentation is shown.

All presentations will be made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Format of Proposal: 250 – 500 words, written. Proposals are a way for the review team to assess your contribution quickly. Please do not submit full presentations.

Proposals should include the following:

• Full name of presenter
• E-mail address of presenter
• Web-site and/or blog URL of presenter
• IM screenname(s)
• Institutional affiliation
• Brief biographical information (under 150 words)
• Include same personal information as above for any additional presenters after the lead presenter (if applicable)
• Presentation title
• Format(s) you are willing to present in (if you are flexible about the format you are willing to present in, please note that)
• Presentation Abstract (250 – 500 words)

Proposals must be submitted by September 22, 2006 via e-mail to sociallibrary@gmail.com. Any questions about the CFP process can be addressed to the Planning Committee at sociallibrary@gmail.com.

Proposal Review: Proposals will be reviewed by the planning committee.

Planning Committee:

• Michelle Boule
• Karen Coombs
• Amanda Etches-Johnson
• Meredith Farkas
• Ellyssa Kroski
• Dorothea Salo

Key Dates:

• Deadline for Proposals: Friday, September 22, 2006.
• Notification of Acceptance: October 1, 2006.